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Children at private schools face the greatest risk from the measles outbreak and could pose a health threat to the rest of the population, a leading doctor has warned.

Professor John Ashton said Britain's 600,000 privately-educated children were at much greater risk of infection than those in the state sector.

Prof Ashton said a mix of large numbers of middle-class children who were not vaccinated against measles following the Wakefield scare in the 1990s, along with pupils from overseas with unknown health records, meant schools could become "reservoirs of disease", the Daily Telegraph said.

He said the risk was similar to that from groups such as gypsies and travellers, who have previously spread the disease.

Prof Ashton, who will soon become president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: "You've got a lot of middle-class, well-off parents, large numbers of whom did not have their children immunised because of the Wakefield scare - which was a very middle-class phenomenon.

"Layered on top of that you have got a lot of children from abroad, especially from the Far East, from countries such as Hong Kong and China, and there are few checks being done to establish their immunisation records."

Health officials in England have launched a campaign to immunise a million children, aged between 10 and 16, with the MMR vaccine following an outbreak in Wales. They warned further measles outbreaks could occur 'anywhere'.

Special clinics are being set up in schools and GP surgeries at a cost of £20 million. There's already been a worrying rise in cases in the north-east and north-west.

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Secondary school children have rolled up their sleeves to receive the MMR jab in Teesside, one of the areas worst affected by the measles outbreak.

Around 70 children, more than 10 percent of the pupils at All Saints School in Ingleby Barwick, received the jab in the dinner hall after their parents consented.

Lucy Butler,15, prepares to have her measles jab at All Saints School in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside. Credit: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Professor Peter Kelly, chairman of the Tees Outbreak Control Team, said there were 186 confirmed cases on Teesside since the new year, with a similar number suspected.

"It's quite a serious problem on Teesside," he said. "We have been aware of it since it started in mid-January and we have been working with our GP colleagues."We wrote to parents six or seven weeks ago to advise them to take their children, if they weren't vaccinated, to the GPs.

"We felt the extra step of coming to schools would give us that really comprehensive coverage of children we need to catch."There is a myth that it is just a childhood illness. People can be very poorly with measles and there can be some very serious complications."